FreshRoast SR500 Automatic Coffee Bean Roaster Review

For anyone who wants to get into roasting their own coffee beans, I would say that the FrenchRoast SR500 Automatic Coffee Bean Roaster is a good place to start.

Let me explain why.

I’d always been under the impression that roasting your own coffee beans was a process reserved for commercial establishments, because I’d seen a few roasting machines in my travels and they were always very large and expensive-looking.

In fact, the local café where I live has a huge roaster, and I just assumed they were all like that one – the size of an industrial size drill.

But roast my own beans as well? No way, I’ll leave that to the pros, thanks.

That is, until one day I ran into a friend of mine who was using a simple West Bend popcorn popper to roast their beans at home, and I was almost insulted.

Especially since they’d brag about how much better their coffee tasted than everyone else’s.

In talking to this friend of mine, she mentioned that of course there were home roasters available for regular coffee-loving consumers, but she said she was happy with her popcorn popper / coffee bean roaster.

That got me thinking that if she could use a popcorn popper, I should be able to one up my friend by checking into some of these supposedly good home coffee bean roasters.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before I came across the FrenchRoast SR500.

After watching this video I’m going to share with you, I realized that this thing might be just what I needed to add to my ultimate home espresso brewing set-up.

FrenchRoast SR500 Review

Here’s what I like about this coffee roaster, after a few trial runs.

First of all, its fairly easy to use.

I’m not saying its easy to master the art of roasting, but just in terms of usability, the FrenchRoast SR500 is pretty darn simple.

You just take your un-roasted green coffee beans, and add them to the roaster so they don’t pass that silver ring.

I will admit, things can definitely go awry if you don’t keep your eye on the prize. Its like abandoning a toaster-oven.

You simply can’t turn your back on it, especially with the sensitive task of coffee bean roasting.

Anyway, if you add the right amount of beans that you’ll be needing, you will have ample roasted beans for many cups of coffee, but you’ll want to keep them fresh using an airtight coffee vault if you have extra.

The Process

I will say that once the beans are roasted, you’ll want to wait a day or so for them to “off-gas”, as they call it (C02 is leaving the bean), where the newly roasted beans will increase in flavor and aroma.

The way I do it, I actually use a little fan to cool them off for a short time (60 minutes after the roasting is complete), then I use a bowl of some sort (not plastic – usually wood or metal) to store them in, with a light cloth over it.

After a day or so (off-gassing depending on the type of bean), I then use my trusty Rocky grinder to grind my beans, which I then brew immediately.

It might sound like a lot of steps, but once I got into the routine of doing all this, I found it yielded the best results for me.

Adjustable Home Coffee Bean Roaster

The best part of the French Roast SR500, I must say, is its how adjustable it is. It has controls for the fan speed, the timer, and the temperature.

You can adjust them all while the beans are roasting too, which puts this home roaster over the top in my books for being a great buy.

Now, some people may not like the fact that this home roaster requires your complete attention while roasting. This isn’t exactly a set-and-forget machine.

You need to have about 10 minutes or thereabouts to devote to keeping an eye on your beans.

To be fair to your coffee, I don’t think roasting coffee beans should be like microwaving a pizza, and so I don’t mind having to keep an eye on things.

This way, I can roast those beans to my preference.

On top of that, every bean is going to be somewhat different in terms of how your roast them. I personally like a darker roast myself.

Furthermore, everyone has their own different tastes anyway, so I think its actually in our collective best interest that this roaster is flexible in that way, don’t you?

That said, I’m sure there’s other roasters out there which don’t require your full attention, but I’d say this one does, so take it or leave it. (Sorry, haven’t had my coffee today!)

Anything Else To Say?

Hm, what else can I say about the FrenchRoast SR500? I’ve heard a lot of talk where people seem to have some fairly strict rules about how to roast coffee beans.

I’ve heard there are two types of pro roasters: technical roasters, and craft roasters. Technical roasters follow a lot of rules when it comes to their bean-roasting routine.

Craft roasters gain a lot of knowledge over time through personal experience and try to feel the process out.

Although I’m just a humble home brewer, I consider myself a “craft roaster” because I like to play around with things a little bit. I don’t like too much structure.

5 Comments

I’m sorry, but that was less of a review than an introduction to a review.
Where’s the detail? How do the controls work? Where are the assessments of the resulting roasted beans? So, I have to watch it for the +/- 10 minutes. How would I interact with it if I didn’t like what I saw or smelled? Did I forget to follow a link somewhere? If so, I apologize.
Generalities are not good enough when offering advice. Folks want specifics. This folk does, at least.

We appreciate you taking the time out of your research to leave a comment. All comments help us improve our reviews. We want to provide the most detailed and complete reviews we can. With that said, I believe we have. There’s a video that had the answers to your questions. It showed the knob control as well as the resulting beans.

I live in India. The working voltage in India is 230 volts. So , I need a converter to use the SR500 roaster in India. But , my problem is all converters (1600 watts and above) warn the converter cannot be used if the load is anywhere from 0 to 25 watts. What I want to know is if you can suggest a converter which can work with this roaster in India. I understand that the load of a roaster is fluctuating . But , if it goes below 25 watts , the converter will transfer full 230 volts to the SR500 and it will get damaged. Please advise.

The unit works exceptionally well on small batches (~60 grams). Controls: 3 Heat levels, digital timer in 6 second increments + 2 min cool-down and rheostat for blower level (blower+convection=bean agitation). The machine works well ***BUT*** it is top-heavy and a bit fragile. Retailers sell replacement parts for the glass jar and both parts of the chaff collector (clearly I’m not alone) but I just broke the jar and everyone seems to be back-ordered. It was a perfect learning tool but I’m now shopping for something a little more robust with larger capacity so that I can roast more than a 2 day supply.